Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  “Describing it’s not enough?” Hap asks. Considering the fucked-up statues they just saw, how can Otis not imagine what a toad with human arms spawning from its back looks like?

  “Girl’s parents have it?” Otis taps the green digital clock on the Caddie’s dashboard. A quarter to nine. “Early sleepers?” he asks, clearly not concerned with getting back to his home and the woman shackled in the bathroom. Hap remembers the first time he slept at Tiff’s house and how they came back from a party at the end of her block. Both her mom and dad were up drinking wine and watching HBO until one thirty on a Tuesday; they’re not early birds.

  As Otis drives onward, Hap notices an Elder sign faintly carved into Otis’s dashboard. Like many things, it was there the whole time, right under his nose. After what they saw in the church, just who or what would be protecting them from the Shack? Maybe the cult’s beliefs can be used against them.

  The woods of Coventry may as well be the same as those of Scituate, but from the way Otis paints the place, it’s a different continent. “Is a woman, Mary, buried in a grave’s yard round here, accused of being a vampire.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one,” Hap says, recalling a time Tiff and he took a trip to Coventry’s infamous haunted graveyard one Halloween. It was anticlimactic.

  “See? You can be one for lore. Pick out the truth like chicken from bone, and you got a meal, aye? Her accusers always monsters themselves, made her an outcast an’ beheaded her. Accusing ones got secrets of they own. Always. Nothing special ‘bout drinking blood anyhow. Sometimes ya gotta.”

  “If we go there, you’re gonna stay in the car,” Hap says. Otis becomes recharged, cackling as he guns the gas and pulls a U-turn in the middle of the street.

  “Sure we don’t gotta tie ‘em up?” Otis asks when the Caddie’s tires crunch along Tiff’s parents’ gravel driveway. Hap is pretty sure he’s kidding, but he’d have to be a lunatic himself to think those words aren’t harmless. Is Hap even capable of being around normal people? He’s sweat through his clothes about three times over now, not to mention crawling through the graveyard and the church; his nails are black, and his teeth probably need a good brush. No matter what, he’ll be a sight to see…and smell.

  They arrive at Tiff’s old house…the house to which Hap still holds a fleeting hope she will one day return to. Otis parks by a woodshed opposite the gravel driveway. Tiff’s dad’s Jeep is parked in front of a two-car garage. They won’t be able to see Otis from the front door.

  A moment later, Hap presses a thumb over the doorbell. If only he had Tiff’s parents’ number. Living in a woodsy neighborhood and having your doorbell ring past dark is sure to put you on edge. Plus, Tiff’s parents already seemed to hate him the last time he heard from them. Maybe they’ve had time to realize he’s done nothing wrong—aside from the whole helping Otis abduct a woman thing. Hap swallows as he hears cautious footsteps approaching the other side of the door. It’s as if he’s there to meet Tiff’s parents for the first time. He imagines, for a moment, a reality where he is here to pick Tiff up for a date.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tiff’s mom says before the door’s even halfway parted. How long did Hap have from Providence to Coventry to think of something, anything, to say?

  “Hey, Mrs. Lorice, I’m sorry to be—”

  “Jerry, Hap is here!” she interrupts him.

  Jerry rounds a corner behind Mrs. Lorice, wearing a scarlet bathrobe and his reading glasses. When Hap first met him, he said to call him Jerry, but Mrs. Lorice never extended such warmness, so it’s Mrs. with her even after dating Tiff for years. Mrs. Lorice puts her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and they stare at Hap for a moment that extends for a small eternity.

  Mrs. Lorice breaks the silence. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Hap’s heart starts twisting around as he tries to come up with some excuse that explains all the grime, not to mention the fresh tattoo bandage on his arm. “I was on a photoshoot near that lake in Scituate, the reservoir.” If only his words could reshape the world.

  “Where are you staying? How did you get here?” Jerry’s got his hands on his hips. They are concerned about him; they do care. Then why haven’t they been here for him? Why can’t he be staying with them instead of a crooked-toothed lunatic?

  “I’ve been in the city for, uh, an internship that might lead to a job. I’m staying at the apartment Tiff and I were going to get….” And there it is; he’s gone and mentioned their daughter. If anything, the Lorices’ concern for him seems to grow.

  “Oh my, you’re staying where you two were going to….” Mrs. Lorice is almost on the verge of tears as Jerry pushes open the screen door.

  “Come inside. We, we were wondering if we would hear from you again, after everything….” Jerry stops short. These are broken people. Hap feels Otis’s sunken eyes on the back of his head as he’s welcomed inside. “Why didn’t you give us a call?” Jerry asks Hap as Mrs. Lorice leads the way to the kitchen.

  “My phone’s been busted. I’ve been working hard for the internship, distracting myself from…. Well…you know.” Hap hopes they don’t realize his face is growing hot. He hopes the dirt will hide the bruises from Otis’s fists.

  “Have you heard anything…anything at all?” Mrs. Lorice asks before Hap can even take a seat at the kitchen table. There are leftovers wrapped in tinfoil on the stove, and he remembers the taste of something not pumped out of a restaurant’s deep fryer or fast-food window. Cidalia’s breakfast this morning was a nice segment of a bad dream, but a dream all the same.

  “No, no, I haven’t.” Hap trembles from the urge to tell them about his great and terrible search. How does he look if he says he has done nothing? Wouldn’t they be impressed by the lengths to which he has gone to find their daughter, failure or not?

  Mrs. Lorice notes Hap staring at the leftovers. “Want some chicken? It’s still warm.” There’s a softly ticking cat clock on the wall, the kind with eyes that shift back and forth alongside a wagging tail; it’s fairy-tale stuff Hap was impressed with his first time here. Somewhere in the house, there is an old sleeping dog called Snack, who’s too tired to bark at strangers. The place still smells like the warm, soothing things that Tiff grew accustomed to her whole childhood.

  Digging into a plate of mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and hunks of grilled chicken seasoned with onion teriyaki, Hap experiences a tingling moment in which there is no psychopath lurking in a car forty feet away from the front door. It’s not even that awkward that Jerry and Mrs. Lorice are silently staring at him as he eats as if he is some mythological Bigfoot that’s walked into their kitchen. Before Hap can completely mop up his plate, though, he’s struck by the sudden fear that Otis will barge in through the front door and make things happen with a snap of his fingers and the screeching of a knife against a wall.

  Jerry asks Hap how he’s been coping, and there’s no better chance to get to the point than now. “There’s something I’ve been looking for that was in our apartment before I had to move out.” Hap stretches back into his chair. He can see a telescope, Tiff’s telescope, positioned by the living room windows, and out of place with the room’s décor. It reminds Hap of Otis’s Christmas tree.

  “Yeah, we…. I was aware of a lot of men’s clothes, but you have to understand the way everybody, especially those girls, was feeling.” Jerry’s staring at his splayed hand as if he’s trying to literally pull a proper explanation out of his head for how Hap was kicked to the curb.

  “It’s okay. I was….” Hap wants to say he was miserable and difficult to deal with because it’s true that he did just mope around that little bedroom, waiting. No, he won’t belittle himself to set Jerry, or anybody else, at ease. “It worked out fine. I got everything I needed, really needed. Everything except this tote…this sculpture I actually wanted to use for a Providence Journal piece on heirlooms. Umm, one of the Browns, the Brown Univers
ity Browns, owned it, if you can believe that. It’s black and like a toad or a frog. It’s an ugly little thing.”

  “I think I remember it. I didn’t think it belonged to Tiff. Providence Journal, huh? You’re taking pictures for them?” Jerry trails off as Mrs. Lorice stands by the sink with her arms crossed. Her eyes are misty; she doesn’t see Hap or her husband anymore. She is off with Tiff in some sweet somewhere.

  “It’s in her room. Some of your clothes are probably mixed in.” Jerry’s biting his lip, standing above his chair with a hand clenching the frame of his glasses. “You can take whatever else you want,” he says softly.

  Hap notes that the TV is off. How much of their night has been spent in a cricket-framed silence? Or maybe they were just reading; maybe nobody’s as miserable as Hap is.

  “Thank you, this was really good. I’ve been living off wings and fries….” Jerry’s hardly cracking a smile, but it’s there, nevertheless. “I can go check?” Hap asks.

  “Go ahead,” Jerry says just as Mrs. Lorice seems to snap out of her trance.

  “Oh, I never asked if you wanted anything to drink,” she says like she forgot something on a checklist. Hap politely tells her he’s fine, despite his throat and lips aching from their dryness. The leftovers went down fine enough. He has never responded well to pleasantries.

  “Still taking pictures with that beaut?” Jerry asks just as Hap is about to head upstairs, noting the camera dangling around his neck. Hap has grown so used to the weight of it that it feels like nothing more than a tie.

  “Ah, yeah, I bring it everywhere.” Hap smiles. Jerry has always been a tech geek. He spent months planning out which telescope he’d buy Tiff.

  “You have pictures on there of Tiff and you?” Mrs. Lorice asks, seemingly slipping back into their presence.

  “No, not on here. Ah, they’re on my computer in the city,” Hap lies. Every photo he ever took of her is in the thing around his neck. He’ll have to look if he shows them to Mrs. Lorice, and he can’t stand to see Tiff’s face. Not now. Not until he finds her.

  “Would you send them to me? All of them. I would really, really love that….” Mrs. Lorice has given up. She is where Hap can’t go. She is ready to pull the nostalgic trigger and leave her husband on the couch for the days, weeks, and years to follow before he too gives up and gives in to the suffocation of memory.

  “Yeah, definitely, as soon as I get home. I’m just going to grab that sculpture.”

  Creaking up the carpeted stairs, Hap wonders if Tiff’s dog, Snack, ran away or died in the last few months. She loved that little guy, a St. Charles like Ron Burgundy’s Baxter from Anchorman. Old age hits the little energetic pups the worst. She used to kid about bringing him to stay at their new apartment “to keep out the mice,” but most importantly, to eat up all the crumbs Hap would spill during his video game blitzkriegs.

  Arriving at a familiar bedroom door with a Carl Sagan Cosmos poster plastered across it, Hap finds Tiff’s bedroom to be both as it should and should not be. Everything is arranged the same way since Hap last saw it, save for one detail. There is a naked man in Tiff’s bed, greasy with blood, and clutching a furry, shriveled up thing across his chest that is not a stuffed animal. Hap can only let out a single, hoarse shout that wants so desperately to be a scream, but his throat is too dry from the chicken. The man’s blue eyes steal all the wonder from Tiff’s bedroom, a ceiling covered in entire galaxies of glow-in-the-dark stars.

  “I got really bored, so I had dinner too,” the man says in a sickening whisper. He throws what’s left of Snack onto the floor, perks up onto his knees, and grins at Hap with his tongue half lolling out of his mouth; it’s almost as if he’s pretending to be a dog himself. In his hand, he has a thin, wiry little knife: a stiletto. He is too groomed, muscular, and young to be anything like Otis. He is a murderous jock with a shaved head. Why the fuck is he naked?

  Hap’s hand settles on the half open doorknob. The totem is on the floor beside a pair of shoes and what must be the man’s clothing; the naked man inspected it and cast it aside like a reptile’s clump of skin. “Don’t go!” the man begs, pouncing from the bed. He grabs Hap by the throat, forcing him to squeal as though he has not yet gone through puberty. Hap’s jerked to the floor, banging his head against the side of Tiff’s bedpost. For an instant, the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling seem to be calling to him.

  The blood-splattered man holds his knife up to the light, using his knee to press Hap into the floor. A yelling somebody stomps up the stairs. “You’re with them, huh?” The man is moaning through gritted teeth as his face flares up with rage enhanced by the blood that seems to be fueling the fire in his eyes. “Your stars will blink, and your cosmic masters will weep and know us brave few men.” The invader raises his thin knife to Hap’s wrist just as Jerry bursts into the room.

  “What the fuck!” he’s screaming, barging toward the blood-splattered man just as the dog-eater pulls away from Hap, dancing on nimble feet. He meets Jerry, and there is a wet, popping sound. Swimming in through Hap’s headache, he realizes he’s becoming familiar with the noise a knife makes when it meets soft flesh and all those hollow pockets quickly filled by air beneath the skin. Turning his back on the butchery, Hap crawls toward the open window and the spiteful chill of distant autumn.

  “Yes! Yes!” The blood-splattered man shrieks behind Hap as the sounds of tearing meat, not unlike a T-shirt splitting in two, reverberate throughout the room. Mrs. Lorice is shrieking downstairs. Is she calling the police? Could the Coventry police be in on this too? No way the whole state could be corrupt, but with Scituate’s reservoir and Otis’s nonsense about a poor vampire girl in mind, greed and public anxiety create all sorts of loopholes for the cult’s predators to operate. The killer was watching the house. He crept in from the woods, stuck to the shadows, and evaded Otis’s watching eye. The Shack is looking for Hap. They want him quiet. They want him to disappear with as little commotion as possible; that’s why he’s not a wanted man….

  There’s a lower roof just below Tiff’s window that she used to sneak onto when she was younger to watch for shooting stars. As Hap climbs through the window, his fresh tattoo begins to ache as his arms brace against the roof. He’s sure the blood-splattered man will grab his foot at the last second. Instead, the man’s glee-stricken face fills the open window frame when Hap looks over his shoulder.

  “I see the moon. The moon sees me,” the killer sings a lullaby, following Hap onto the roof.

  Hap crawls to the second tier of roofing over the garage before rising on shaky legs to hop down to the garage gutter in hopes of lowering himself to the driveway. His camera dangles from his neck, and Hap wonders if the killer cracked it. The blood-splattered man’s worn, white basketball shoes clunk onto the garage rooftop. In the time it took Hap to clamber across the roof, the man was able to slip on shoes and jeans, but still no shirt. Dog tags that Hap didn’t notice before hang from his neck. Hap lets go of the gutter and drops to the gravel right before the man’s shoes smash where Hap’s departing fingertips were.

  Someone who reeks of piss and grease brushes by Hap’s side and Otis’s stench has never smelled so good. Otis taps his knife against his thigh and tilts his head to meet the gaze of the blood-splattered man on the roof. Eye to widening eye, the mad killers smile at one another. Hap gets the distinct impression that, like two rabid dogs, these two may just turn on him in their frenzy and share the spoils. Hap takes a few steps back; the man jumps onto the hood of Jerry’s Jeep before hopping to the driveway, holding his knife backwards.

  “You could be my dad,” the man says no less than fifteen feet from Otis. The dog eater’s voice has the faintest Southern twinge to it. Hap is directly behind Otis, ignored for now. He can feel the chaos crawling through the air, ready to combust.

  “Fuck moms after the fact, boy, with this right here.” Otis holds his knife out like a badge. “Maybe
I got yers?”

  The young murderer is all smiles. “Well, congratulations on finding her. I’d do it myself, I could. My dad’s the one I’d like to see, though. I been thinking—’cause he’s an outsider like you—I been thinking you know each other. You ever run into a man named David Woodbury? He’s got a big ol’ blue octopus tattooed on his bald head. Or are you not the servant of Yog-Shit-Sock and the hoarder of eyes?” The blood-splattered man then looks over Otis’s shoulder and addresses Hap. “Do you know where my father is?”

  Otis strikes amidst the dog eater’s disjointed rambling, but the young man is ready. Like the mandibles of dueling insects they meet, and their knives immediately find soft bits and sink home. Interlocked and bleeding, Otis and Woodbury slide backwards into Jerry’s Jeep. There are grunts and growls, though determining which man initiates each sound is impossible. They are conjoined into one snarling beast.

  Otis is pierced in an ugly, blood-gushing spot along his breast while his knife has only sunk into Woodbury’s bicep, which pumps streams of blood across Otis’s clothes, filling the gravel beneath their feet like rainwater. Several flicks of the wrist, and the fight is already winding down. Both killers’ movements are slowing. They’re bleeding to death.

  Woodbury angles his stiletto up through Otis’s collar, slashing back down across his neck and chest, trying to dig deep into his throat. Otis, slower, pulls his fat knife through the rest of Woodbury’s arm and into his ribcage. The stiletto clatters to the ground while Otis twists the blade, and the young man’s startled cry gurgles.

  “See the gatekeeper welcoming you in?” Woodbury moans. Otis coughs, birdlike. They both fall. Woodbury slumps against the Jeep while Otis, on all fours, presses a hand to his wound.